


living's just a promise that i made

by nbsherlock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Fix-It, Introspection, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, how do you fill out a job application when you've never filed a tax return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28644978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbsherlock/pseuds/nbsherlock
Summary: you don’t move back home after the world ends. you rent a one-bedroom apartment.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	living's just a promise that i made

**Author's Note:**

> don't look at me. title from didn't know what i was in for by better oblivion community center. sorry phoebe, sorry conor. this one's for you guys!

Healing sits in front of him like something to reach out and touch. It says: what makes you happy? The first step is to find something you’re good at, because no matter how they word it, the thing that will make you happy is the thing you do best. 

Dean is stuck on the first step. 

—

There are things he’s good at, but they’re things that hurt. Years and years of doing that thing that he’s good at under the guise of helping settle heavy on his back. Hurting the thing that hurts others is supposed to help. But all it really does is keep you up at night. 

There’s a job application rolled up like a weapon and held firm in his hand and it asks: what are you good at? Sardonically: hunting, killing, saving the world. (And as an aside, can you really call yourself good at saving the world if you have to keep doing it? Shouldn’t the once be enough?) But actually, this time: what are you good at? What are your qualifications? 

A few months ago, Dean stood on an empty Earth. Today, he’s standing in a bookstore in their self-help section. A few years ago he’d trace along hyper-specific titles and think: how could something this specific happened to enough people to warrant an entire book being written to help them climb out the other side? He knows, now, it only takes the one. He aches for it to be written out in front of him. So, you know how it feels to know that as far as you run you’ll never see another living soul? To beg God for the return of day-time television? Here’s what you do next.

He doesn’t know how to categorize the feeling that sits on his shoulder, the one opposite the little devil telling him to end it all now. His voice is familiar. 

—

He walks out empty-handed, because it’s embarrassing to ask for help even if it’s from a disembodied voice, a piece of paper. The thought of setting a book about grief or depression down in front of a teenage cashier working for minimum wage is mortifying. He even considered, for a moment, the sideways lean, the snarky smile, it’s so weird that I'm buying these books— they’re for my brother. And the cashier wouldn’t have to see him, not as he was. Just as a good brother. 

—

Sammy's doing fine. Or, Dean assumes he’s doing fine because Eileen has texted him and said “He’s struggling, but he’ll get through it.” And that’s as good as, especially because coming from Sam directly, the text would’ve read “I’m okay. You?” 

Dean would have responded: “Me too.” Which would’ve meant: “I spent the last three nights wide awake staring at the ceiling and trying to keep from praying to someone who isn’t there.”

—

So, Dean returns to the bunker empty-handed aside from the perpetually blank job application, sits at the edge of his bed and breathes through the quiet. It’s intolerable, at times. It’s why he leaves, why he stands in public places just to feel bad about his inaction, his unwillingness to try to fix this. The alternative is being here, in this empty space that used to have life thrumming through it, and doing the same thing. It echoes louder without the white noise of other people. Without someone coming up behind him and tapping him on the shoulder, “Are you looking for something?” Shit, lady, if I could only tell you. 

—

The guilt is the hardest thing to stomach. Because, despite having its own word, its own unique feeling of dragging in the pit of his stomach, it’s born of something else. Sometimes different things; the grief, the anger, the sadness. More often than not it settles on jealousy. 

He feels sick when he lets himself think about it too long. When he visits them he feels like he’s a plague unto their fucking house; like everything he touches goes empty. Last time he visited, Eileen told him she was pregnant. Sam couldn’t bring himself to say anything, was choked up by the time they sat down to eat. Dean couldn’t find the right words, the right way to say congratulations, over the thundering in his head, through his veins. Over the way the room seemed to empty out as she said the words. Sam hooked an arm around her. Dean smiled, the thing crawling over his face and staying plastered there for the remainder of the evening.

Dean didn’t touch her after that, still hasn't. He's afraid he’ll sap the life from her. That somehow he’ll manage to ruin it, this one perfect thing. He watches Sam rub a palm along her back, he watches them smile at each other. And then he looks to the side and notices he’s watching himself too. He snaps out of it when he sees the shell of his body start to turn its head towards him. 

—

He doesn’t clean the bunker. They used to do that together every Sunday morning, the dishes and the sweeping and the laundry and Dean’s Zeppelin playlist blasting so loud you could hear it from every corner of every room. But he lets trash pile up, wears dirty clothes, orders take-out when he can find the motivation to eat. It’s not healthy, this way of living. He never fooled himself into thinking it was. He smashes mirrors, breaks things arbitrarily, never tries to fix anything once it’s broken. It’s torture, to stay in this place, in what was once a home despite appearances. 

You don’t move back home after the world ends. You rent a one-bedroom apartment. 

—

The question remains, looking down at the job application, picking up self-help books when he stumbles down the street and into the local bookstore: What are you good at? 

When he was young; good at keeping Sam safe, at diffusing arguments, living as a human shield, at drinking a beer at the bar to make his dad’s friends laugh, at stilling his trembling hands while aiming for cans on a fence, at keeping food on the table, at kneeling in alleyways and scuffing denim against concrete, at keeping it in, at pretending it was okay even when it wasn’t.

When he was old enough; at keeping his dad as safe as he could, held wriggling at arm's length, never strong enough to fight back and be the man his dad wanted him to be and kept him from being all at once. At keeping it in. 

Then keeping Sam safe, again. And he wasn’t even always able to do that. And, sure, Sam’s important, he always has been. But as Dean grew up, Sam grew up too. They met other people Dean should’ve kept safe. And he didn’t. Got people killed more times than he could count. People who were important to him. People he loved. And sure, now the world’s on the other side of it all, in the after, and Sammy’s okay, he’s in love and having a baby and he’ll be okay. But Dean’s still in that before. He’s still waiting for people to come back who will never come back. There’s no magic fix to this one. 

So, what is he good at? Waking up, breathing in, breathing out. Existing under the crushing weight of existence, of free will. And what good is it, really? What’s the use of choice if the only choice you’re making is between living and dying?

\--

He gives in, one night. He stares up at the ceiling and speaks, softly even though there’s no one in the bunker to hear him, even though there’s no one to hear him at all. He tries to talk to Jack, but he knows who he’s really talking to when the words start coming out.

“Hey. I don’t know if anyone can hear me. Guess I’m just talking to fill the silence, y’know?” He swallows. Braces himself. “It’s rough down here, man. Everyone’s acting like nothing happened. And, I guess, for them, it didn’t. But…” He shuts his eyes. “But, I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I worked so hard for this, for a world where I could just fucking exist. But I don’t want to anymore. It’s so fucking-” He takes a deep breath, ignores the stinging of his eyes, the wet feeling in his throat when he does. “It’s so fucking lonely.” 

He fixes himself, rubs a closed fist over his eyes, shakes his head. “I’m talking to myself.” 

\--

When he wakes up he hears someone in the kitchen. It’s strange, for a moment it’s as if he’s gone back in time, that nothing changed. That he didn’t lose anyone. He stumbles down the hall and stares at his back until he turns around.

“Oh, hi Dean!” Jack grins, holding a sponge and a spatula. 

“Those dishes are nasty.”

“Yes,” Jack nods.

\--

“I would’ve come sooner,” Jack says, bent over Dean’s laundry pile and placing it in a basket.

“Couldn’t you just… poof those clean?” Dean fiddles with his hands, leans against his bedroom door.

“I missed doing things like this. Anyway, I would’ve come sooner, but I was fixing heaven,” Jack sighs. 

Dean shuts his eyes and shakes his head, “Fixing heaven.”

“It needed it, don’t you think? No more living your happiest moments over and over.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean nods, “What’s’it now?”

“Kind of just like Earth. But better, I guess, because people can’t die,” Jack grins at him with the last bit, goes back to putting the laundry in a basket.

“And you did all that by yourself?” The kid is like four.

“Cas helped.”

\--

Dean stands next to Jack as he loads his laundry into the washing machine, waiting for answers. Relatively patiently.

“Fucking talk.”

Jack glances up at him. “I’m thinking about the best way to explain.”

Dean, flabbergasted, shakes his head, “I don’t need the best way, Jack. Just tell me how.”

“I guess I just pulled him out.”

“And now, what, he’s dead? He’s in Heaven?”

Jack shrugs. “I guess I could put him back down here, if he wanted.”

That stings, a little, to think that Cas hasn’t asked, hasn’t thought to ask Jack to send him back down. That he could know what Dean’s going through, that he might know Eileen’s pregnant and hasn’t done anything. Come to say congratulations, at least.

Instead of saying any of that, Dean leans back against the wall and breathes.

\--

“Well,” Jack says.

“Well,” Dean repeats. “Did you come down here just to do my chores for me?”

“I was worried about you,” Jack says, shrugging. “You seemed upset.”

Dean nods, idly. Shakes his head, when he thinks about it. “And that was worth popping down for?”

Jack nods, “Of course.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, scuffs his sneaker on the floor of the bunker. “I’ll talk to Cas, see how he feels about coming back down.”

“Why?”

Jack smiles. “You were praying to him. I can tell the difference.”

And then he’s gone.

\--

For the first time in months, Dean picks up the phone and calls Sam, if only to confirm that he isn’t going insane.

“Uh, hey Dean,” Sam’s voice comes through, slightly staticky. “You okay?”

“Jack came to visit.”

Sam snorts. “Oh. Sorry we missed him.”

“So, that doesn’t sound batshit crazy?”

“Nope. He came to visit when we found out Eileen was pregnant.”

Dean sits with this for a second. Again, the faint sting. “You didn’t think to tell me?”

“To be honest, I figured he would have gone to visit you right after. Surprised he didn’t.”

“Huh,” Dean hums.

“What’d he have to say?”

“What? Oh,” Dean weighs telling the truth. “Just wanted to check in on me.”

Sam chuckles. “Sounds like him.”

“Yeah.”

\--

The next few weeks feel like a space between. He doesn’t want to call out to Jack again, ask him for an update. He feels like that’s a step too far. Jack will pop back up when he’s ready, when there’s something to tell. There’s no point in asking for something before it’s ready.

But, if he’s honest with himself, and he rarely is, he wants to. He’s impatient. He wants Jack to be next to him, doing the dishes and the laundry just to feel close to human again, until Cas is ready. Just to fill the empty space. He even considers calling Sam a few times, asking if he can stay at his place until this is over. But the reality is that he doesn’t know if the conclusion to this is Cas coming back, and even if it is-- what comes after that? Cas stood in front of him and exalted him, and for what purpose? The message clearly didn’t make it through, if the hemming and hawing about his purpose, the things he’s good at, are any signal. But he stood there. And he told Dean he loved him. 

So Dean will wait.

\--

And he does wait. He waits and waits and waits, and it feels just like it did before but now his hands vibrate with the need to touch, he feels disconnected in a way he didn’t before, padding barefoot through the bunker and feeling untethered. There wasn’t a place for his hands, before. But now he feels the absence, the places where his touch would slot into. He feels it in his fingertips.

\--

He wakes up every morning and looks out at his room, at the blank job application, at the self-help book he finally caved and bought but hasn’t read, at the empty beer bottles that will be swept away by Jack at the end of the week, at the bits and pieces of his life that he’s collected over the years, at the way the room still doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. It never felt like it was his; even before, it was just a place to lay his head.

He wakes up every morning and he waits.

\--

When he finally shows up, it’s with little fanfare. Dean thinks of the early days, of the shattered glass and the flashing lights and the TV static. Now, he stands before him in dim lighting wearing the fucking coat and smiling. When Dean reaches out and touches, Cas doesn’t shrink back. He doesn’t die. He shines. 

“Hello, Dean,” he says, like he has to. Like it’s written for them. But it’s not, not this time.

Dean leans in and kisses him. 

He imagines lightbulbs exploding, the doors and walls shaking. This, this is what he wants to be good at.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @margaritaville i've ostracized all of my followers and friends.


End file.
